"We Learn It Too Late" - 5 Regrets Trapping People From A Life Of Purpose & Meaning | Gabor Maté

symptoms or do you have symptoms? You are not having symptoms, explain what you mean by perception of, you know suffering essentially well. I was talking to someone else about this today, so you and I know that in Western medicine we medicalize everything and that's why we talk about premenstrual. Syndrome is not a premenstrual syndrome, it is a syndrome, it is a medical entity, what really is that under the impact of hormonal changes women become more sensitive, so they may have more physical pain and more discomfort, but we can see it as pathological or actually we could say that it is a moment of truth to things that do not work in their lives and that the rest of the time they are forced to endure and listen to, yes, but the menstrual ferment in their bodies makes it less tolerable, so instead From seeing it as a pathology, we could see it as a moment of understanding and what would happen if they really listened to their bodies and listened to what their body says, knowing that the rest of the month they repress it?

So that could be seen as a moment of wisdom rather than a moment of suffering, so the physical things are there, but it is not necessary to experience it, since suffering can also be experienced as a moment of truth, also menopause , yes, this speaks to the second regret, which is: I wish I hadn't worked so hard. difficult, yes, and what I mean by this is that I agree that for many women, yes, and I can think of so many patients like this, their hormonal symptoms, we actually show them that the way you currently live is not exactly in harmony with your body.

Now of course sometimes

people

struggle to make changes, it's hard to make changes, maybe their

life

is very stressful and at that moment they can't change it for whatever reason and I totally empathize with that. I understand it, yes, but for some

people

they can. sometimes it's one of the best things that ever happened to them, yeah, now this thing about I wish I hadn't worked so hard, it's interesting because I wish I hadn't worked so hard and what do I mean by that? Speaking for myself and I don't know if this is true for you, but I became a doctor for very good reasons, one of them was that I really wanted to help suffering humanity and I thought that medicine is a perfect path through which I can I could help people, that's genuine and I meant it.

I also chose a profession where I was pretty sure I would make a decent living so I could maintain a

life

for myself and my family that was legitimate, but those reasons don't make you work too hard. You work hard but they don't make you work too hard what makes you work too hard and that's what these people say is that you're driven by something that you're not even aware of and that I wasn't aware of when I went to medical school and when I was a doctor for decades, how motivated I was to justify my existence in the world and show it that I was important and worthwhile, etc., and that had to do with the loss of those who were trusted. because of early childhood trauma then it is not a question, no one says I wish I had not worked hard to achieve something in life, you have to work hard, they are saying I wish I had worked too hard and that to break up, the part also comes. of being driven by unconscious needs to validate Your Existence, where why should any human being have to validate his existence?

You know, that's what they say and when they make you work too hard, you actually ignore what matters and what matters is Um, what you told me last night about how much it's important to you to spend time with your family, so that every summer you take a couple of weeks off from your podcast and just spend time enjoying your kids, your wife, and your family. and I didn't do that, it was very difficult for me to even take vacations. I always felt like they had to keep working if someone was pregnant, oh my god, what if I missed the birth like the baby couldn't come into the world without me?

You know, that drive is what makes people work too hard and so it's not a question of working hard, it's a question of working too hard and where does that come from? A gain that comes from childhood trauma. Many doctors and I have several friends like This about them not taking their full annual leave allowance sounds like you would have been similar. I had that tendency, yes, yes, and often people say, and I have a friend who says this, yes, but my patients need me, no, they don't need me. They need medical help, yes, but I think we have to ask ourselves and this is very, very common in medicine, in fact, I'm sure it's common in other professions as well.

Yes, it's interesting when you don't take your full annual leave allowance. that your contract entitles you to often paid time off, it's part of your job when you're not taking it, of course there may be reasons for it, there may be reasonable reasons, there may be work reasons, but if it's not I think I think it may be worth reflecting on some of the underlying factors. You know, those real drivers of that. It occurs to me that what your friend is really saying is not that my patients need me, but that I need my patients to feel good and when I'm not working to help them.

I don't know who I am and I don't feel comfortable so I need you now, that means taking him to a therapist and treating him and not only that, even Your ability to help. your patience over time will be totally eroded by the way you stress out and don't take care of yourself and doctors are notoriously programmed to ignore themselves and there was a very interesting study that I mentioned in the book The Myth of Normality. They observed the wear and tear of people's chromosomes and you know, when we are born, we were born with certain structures called telomas and telomas are DNA structures at the end of our chromosomes and their wear and shortening is a mark of aging and stress and they observed the teloma of medical residents compared to other people their age, they age faster, they fray faster, so doctors are forced to not cut corners and literally burn themselves out in the long-term work, which can Making yourself a very popular and successful doctor in the long run will be at the expense of your marriage and your children and your own physical and mental health.

For me, I do look at that situation and reflect on society and culture. What I see these days is a very me-centered culture where community has been gradually eroded, yes, and therefore, if we think about a human being, a human being needs to feel that he has value to other people and that he is in our tribes You know, 50,000 years ago we would have felt valuable because we would have a role and other people would see that role, they would benefit from it and we would benefit from the things that they were doing, you know, if someone is hunting, someone is gathering, someone is putting He Shoots at whatever may be in this self.

Focus culture where it's all me, me and what my needs are and what I need to do and how I can improve. I feel like we often don't feel like a Val to others. You don't feel important and so it makes sense that in that culture you work too hard and keep pushing yourself because if you're not working and feeling important there, then you may not actually have that feeling in any other aspect of your life. if you weren't given the um, it's very simple, if in early childhood you were given the feeling that you are valued just because you existed, your parents welcome you, validate you, value you and celebrate you just because you are, then no. you do.

You don't have to keep proving it

late

r, MH, but if you don't have that feeling then you have to be important, yes, so that feeling of needing to be important has to come from losing yourself from being valued for who you are or from being valued only for your achievements you know you are valued, look, my parents blessed their souls, but they valued my intelligence, you know, and a big part of my Persona got caught up in being smart and proving my worth that way, well, it's good to be smart, but Your value should not depend or should not depend on any quality, whether you are cute, tender, handsome, successful, good at sports or smart in school, all of that your value is intrinsic, innate, inherent because a human being in A society, as you say, tends to value people for what they do and that can become very, very addictive, but going back to your friend who says that my parents, my patients need me and you think about it and I am not accusing them of anything, but they're not realizing that statement is just selfish, it's like it's up to them, their patients need good healthcare, but they don't specifically need them, which means they should be able to take care of themselves as usual and when you make sure that when you're not there MH your patients get the care they need so it's not about us and I used to think it was always about me if I wasn't there for this particular woman's delivery.

Baby, oh my god, you know like it's all up to me, there's probably a control issue there too, isn't there? I know exactly how I would do it. I need to be there because I know how I would handle this birth and that kind of thing which is the inability to let go exactly, someone else can probably do this too, yeah, or if they can't do it too, so be it, you know, so be it, ya You know, yeah, as I was walking to the studio. In the morning, thinking about our conversation, the word impressive kept coming up for me and I'm reflecting on the word impressive because, again, I think culturally we think it's good to impress others.

Okay, that work you did is impressive, MH, but really. If you're really impressive or certainly if I do, it implies to me and maybe this is my own bias because this is what I've done for much of my life, yes, I've changed who I am to impress others, yes. I didn't feel like I impressed others by being myself, yes, I impressed them by changing, yes, so what comes to mind when you hear the word impressive? Have we been wrong? Know? Has it been taken to mean something it is not? How do you see the word impressive?

Well, um, awesome, first of all it has to do with our impact on other people, how others see us, so if I can be myself and express my own truth and not drive myself. I get into activities that are not good for me and people are impressed, that's great, but if my intention is to impress other people, if I need to make a certain impression on someone else's mind, where am I living? their minds instead of in myself, so the question is where do I want to live here or in your mind, you know, and our society is so addicted to people being awesome in the minds of others, that means we live in the minds of others. no more than what we live in ourselves, so if I can, if you can, be yourself and see if that seems impressive to me, that's great, but you're not doing it to impress me, you're just doing it because that's how you're expressing it. . who you are if I'm impressed great if I'm not impressed that doesn't take anything away from you but to the extent that we depend on impressing others we are robbing ourselves that's how I see that word just taking a quick break to be thankful barefoot shoes I live now.

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All you need to do is go to Vivo Barfoot. co.nz my emotions yeah, which I guess are no different than the first one about living a life that is true to yourself no and again, the word courage comes up and these people judge themselves and it's a more interesting way of say it. it's why I didn't express my feelings, you know, here's the thing, um again in my writing in the MTH than normal. I quote this great neuroscientist who died in his mid 70's from cancer a few years ago, those of us who knew still mourn him his name was Dr.

Yak pank p n k s p p he was from the Baltic states yes he was Estonian I think he was but maybe Latino you know and he was an effective neuroscientist, so he studied the neurobiology of emotions and wrote a book called The Archeology of the Mind is one of the hallmark books of sciencemodern and pointed out that we share certain emotional circuits with other animals, so we have circuits and capitalized on these circuits, these systems so that the care system MH and there was a system for anger system for fear for lust for joy for joy in other words by search that is curiosity um pain and we share these brain circuits with other mammals in other words these emotions are not luxuries, they are emotionally.

I must say that they are evolutionarily determined aspects of who. so if we take the care system, it is essential because without care mom's baby does not survive MH there has to be something in the parents' brain that drives those parents to take care of the baby and something in the baby's brain that drives to connect with parents to take care of them, that's just evolutionary biology, so we have all these emotional systems, anger is one of them, as I mentioned, fear, pain or others and children, one of the emotional needs of children when I studied and invested what you know and interviewed experts in Child Development one of the What I

learn

ed and what I write about is that one of the needs of children for healthy brain development is the freedom to experience and express all the emotions that arise in them, that is simply necessary for health.

And now what happens in this society where many parents? They get the message that certain emotions from their children are not acceptable, so you know that a child can experience a loss like a dog or a grandparent, and the child is upset and the parents cannot handle the child's pain. . Get out of there, it's just a dog or you get over it, people die, you know, um, or a kid gets mad, uh, because you didn't give them a cookie before dinner, you know, and a 2-year-old makes a tantrum and you I can't handle it I think you know I've talked about this before, so the child gets the message that to be acceptable to the parents they have to suppress their emotions, so when these people talk about that and the suppression of emotions As I have often made the case with you and in my books, actually, about my health, our physiology and our immune system, so when these people in their last weeks regret not having had the courage to express their emotions, of what are they really talking about.

It's that a long time ago, when they were children, they were forced to suppress their emotions in order to be accepted, yes, and now they regret it because they feel that they were forced to abandon themselves, so again I would remove the word courage and ask. Instead of judging them for lack of courage, I would say what happened to them because, again, no baby lacks the ability to express their emotions, yes, so if they lose it it is because they

learn

ed that they had to do it in terms of something practical around At this point, gabo yes.

If there are parents listening and their children, let's say, sometimes get angry or throw a tantrum, whatever it is, yes, of course, there is a certain conditioning in our Western society about what one should do about it, yes, given their vision in terms of what is important to a child and what you just said, what would you encourage a parent to do when their child is? I was going to use the word play, but it's a ridiculous term because play is a social construct that a child is simply expressing. emotions, we call it playing because we don't like it, you know what he's doing or what the people next door are thinking or whatever it may be, right, the American drum is playing, yes, they use that phrase.

Here, yes, they use this H-phrase, yes, so getting back to it, the parent who may be struggling but wants to be a better parent wants to leave, actually, you know what talk? I really want to make sure I let my son do it. express the emotions of him yes, do you have any advice for me? what would you say to them? no, I do it well so that you know that there are um, we can talk about three ways of parenting, one is permissive parenting in which you allow any behavior and it does not interfere you know that that is not the worst thing you can do to children, but that It is allowing them to express themselves, yes, but there is a difference: they could express themselves by hitting their siblings, for example, and you do not allow parents to need children to do it.

I feel like someone is in charge, yes, parenting is not a democracy, it is a hierarchy, um, in a hierarchy there is a dominant Force, the parent dominates the child, not to exploit or repress the child, but to nurture and support the child. , you know, so you know you live in Manchester and I don't know how cold it is in Manchester, but if you have a one year old, they can't vote on whether they can crawl outside in winter in Manchester, you know, naked, you know, parents say no. you don't go out naked you know you have to dress that's how it is it's a hierarchy it's not a democracy the one year old doesn't get a vote okay and he goes into the mud and snow in the middle of December or whenever, um, so that's it permissive parenting, that's not very good.

Then there is repressive parenting, which some experts we have talked about argue that authoritarian parenting among them is the golden mean, so there is permissive parenting here, authoritarian parenting here, so there is authoritarian parenting in the middle authoritarian parenting. en I'm in charge I know what's good for you um I'm the authority um so I know what to do with you so if a child is upset you say oh, you're upset, you know? you're mad at mommy mommy didn't let you have a cookie before dinner yes, you're really upset about it yes, well come here, I know how you feel, in other words, you validate the emotion, you don't punish the child for it. and you hold the child because the child needs to learn Le that can go through these difficult emotions and overcome them and still be loved and still be loved, yes, that doesn't mean you let them pull the cat's tail or break its tail. break the glass, you know, break the furniture or hit their brother, but that doesn't mean you validate the emotions and hold them in and then they learn, oh, and actually, and when it's also age-specific, like It wouldn't make sense to say it to someone and an older person, let's look for it, let's express it through words, they don't have the words, but you can say to a 5-year-old child: can we find some words for your anger?

In other words, you can teach them to express their emotions in ways that are um, socially appropriate, yes, at any age you have to be appropriate, but fundamentally you validate the emotions, hold the child and make them feel like they can have these emotions. I don't want you to behave that way, but you can have them. the emotion and I'm not going to reject you for that, it's not that difficult and people do it sometimes intuitively, yes, and the impact of parenting like that will be felt for the rest of that child's life, absolutely, and that's the key, no.

If you look, you look around you, in society, it's very, very difficult not to argue that we have society set up so that in those early years children receive good nutrition, have calm environments, have parents present, you know, I always surprise. the amount of leave that people in the United States or mothers get from their jobs in the United States. I think one of my friends, Partners in America, had two weeks off, oh what, I, what two weeks off after giving birth, well, when I investigated the myth of normalcy. found that 25% of women in the states return to work within 2 weeks of giving birth, and 25% of women now needless to say this is determined both economically and racially, but it means that it is a massive abandonment of the child, yes, because from the point of view of the development of enzymes in the child the physiological development of the child psychological security they need the mother for many, many, many months and you try to take a baby from an orangutan after two weeks and see what happens, yeah, you know.

And in fact, they've done some very cruel studies with monkeys that show the impact of maternal deprivation at those early ages. You know, studies that are terrible to read about, yes, and they prove what they prove: love, touch and connection are a big deal. We should have known this from the beginning, but the point is that it is a statistic that 25% of women have to return to work within two weeks of labor within two weeks of giving birth; It is a massive abandonment of children whose impact will be reflected in their lives. Physical and mental health decades

late

r, yes, and then they wonder why there are so many problems.

Tomorrow is the annual lifestyle medicine prescribing course that I have been teaching with a colleague, Dr. Panga, since 2018 and of course you will be the guest. tomorrow and I am very excited that we will be able to communicate with doctors and share their work and how they can bring it to their practice. It's really very exciting, one of the things I look forward to. "We will be able to share with the audience tomorrow what I think is the biggest hole in medical school training. If you had asked me 5 years ago, I might have said, oh nutrition and sleep, and we have to teach doctors about importance".

It's one of these things and we do it, yes, but if I had to choose one thing that I think is the biggest hole in current medical training for me is that doctors, many doctors leave medical school without understanding our emotions, oh, I see what I'm saying yes, that the way we think, holding on to anger, resentment, not being able to forgive and move on, I really don't think that within medicine there is an understanding that this can contribute to bad health, yeah, it's a big gap and, um, I think both. You and I have had to discover it not as a consequence but in spite of our medical education, yes, and when you are in practice and I mean as a family doctor, we have an advantage over specialist colleagues in that we know people before they they. get sick, yeah, so we can see who gets sick and I couldn't help but notice that people's emotional lives are so intertwined with physiological health and as you suggest, no one in medical school told me there's a huge gap.

By the way, it also has to do with how we relate to ourselves because the way doctors are trained is very often very stressful and very, um, almost traumatic in significant ways, which is why I mentioned the word self-care because being trained to stoically. ignoring ourselves, we are also discounting the importance of emotions in our clients, yes, so I wish in medical school there was more emphasis on dealing with our own things, yes, for sure, and in conjunction with that, so Therefore, the awareness of the importance of people's emotional lives, yes. and what's really interesting here is that some of the great pioneers of medicine have known this all along and said it hundreds of years ago.

Well heh Martin shco, who first described multiple sclerosis, said that this is related to stress and pain and uh. It is statistically and according to studies carried out since then, but he just saw it, he did not know, and there is a great British surgeon, James Padet, yes, he knows about Padet's disease and he operated on women with breast cancer and he said that breast cancer breast is undoubtedly related to emotional factors, that is so evident that it is difficult to ignore and that is why these great pioneers said this and their teachings have been completely ignored.

Yes, let's be very clear, this is a very sensitive area for people because a lot of people perceive it as guilt and guilt, I know you don't say it like that, I don't say it like that when I talk about it, yeah, but it's often like , what are you saying, I did this to myself, you must have had it before people had it. He said yes, yes, just clarify that for them please, well we've actually been talking about it, um, emotion suppression, no one is born with it and it's not a lack of courage or wisdom, it's a programmed response to childhood experience, so people have The message must be before they have any choice in the matter that if they are truly themselves, if they express who they are, their emotions as we have been talking about, will not be accepted, so that's programming that people are ingrained in. in his early childhood, how is it his fault?

Yes, it's just the way they adapted to the environment necessarily, in fact, it was an inevitable and unavoidable adaptation because the alternative of being rejected by their families or their friends was not acceptable for a young child, therefore, no one He does this to himself in no conscious or deliberate sense. What I can tell you is that when people are diagnosed and become aware of these dynamics, they find it liberating, yes, so in the normal, I quote the um, the American method. Singer Shell Crow who was diagnosed with breast cancer and said that before the diagnosis I was always a people pleaser and didn't express myself and there was always a voice in my head that said I was wrong and that I had to adapt to other people's expectations people.

I'm paraphrasing her, but she said: I've learned differently now and now I'm really paying attention to myself, so again that's this idea of ​​illness as a teacher. Cheryl Crow wasn't born that way and she didn't choose to. Be like this, that was her response to her upbringing, so no one is being blamed here, but we are saying that if you allow that illness to wake you up and teach you something, it is possibleMay you have a much better life than you could have imagined, yes, I believe. This is actually very interesting. First, we can explain to people that emotions matter.

The ability to express your emotions is important if you repress them. Yes, it can have some pretty serious physical consequences. Yeah, so let's say a doctor. OK, that's going well, so what do I do with it? Well, what do doctors do with that? Well, this is what depends on how you are oriented, like psychologically oriented. I always have been. I've always been interested. Well, for me it was a natural move from focusing strictly on the physical symptoms to dealing with the whole person. Another doctor may recognize the value of this but not have the guidance to address it, but at least he can tell his clients to listen.

There is a lot of information, so when you come in with your rheumatoid arthritis or your multiple sclerosis or your chronic eczema or chronic migraines or irritable ball syndrome or inflammatory ball disease or whatever you present with, there is now a lot of information, a lot of scientific information. information that shows the connection between, in fact, the unity of mind and body and the inextricable relationship between the immune system and emotions, etc. I'm not trained in that, I'm going to deal with the physical aspects of the disease. 'I'm going to put you on anti-inflammatories, immunosuppressants or steroids, whatever you need to mitigate the symptoms, but can I send you someone so you can talk about these things?

Are you interested? We're not necessarily talking about all doctors having to become experts in this, but they should at least be aware of it so they can guide people towards a broader approach to their illness. Number one. Number two. There are certain simple things that any doctor can ask. like one of my books when the body says no, that's the title um and in the myid of normal there is a chapter called but before the body says no, you can ask your client, it's a very simple question, in what part of your life you don't say no, to whom?

He doesn't know what he wants to say but you don't say it to please others, can you consider it because that simple matter of not saying no can wreak havoc on your health because if you don't say no? when when you want to say no, you're actually holding back and then you're taking on more stress and more burden, so those simple questions that any doctor can ask, it's not as complicated as all that, yes, but the point is The first step is simply being aware of the aforementioned connection between emotions and physiology; then, if the doctor wants to carry out a more in-depth study, he can do it;

If he doesn't, at least he can guide people to explore that. connection elsewhere, yes, completely agree, thank you, yes, fourth regret. I wish I could keep in touch with my friends, yeah, well what we're talking about goes back to the other guys about working too hard, you know, like, what are they? argue that there is a need for attachment, connection, belonging and what these people are saying is that I was too driven by whatever factor drove me to ignore my personal relationships and focus my attention on things that ultimately don't matter, my acquisition, my achievement, my achievement huh, instead of heart to heart human contact with people that I care about and again, people feel driven to be like that and when they look back on their life they regret it because it is often said that no one is on a deathbed.

He

regrets

not going to the office often enough, but he does regret the heart connection they sacrificed. Have you kept in touch with your friends? Well, you know, that's where you could say I don't have one. I mean, I have more. More recently, I care a lot more now, but over the years, I put work, my pursuits, and my writing ahead of everything, that is absolutely balanced by the fact that his work and his writing, yes, have influenced the lives of millions. of people, I guess what I'm trying to get at is on a personal level, they may have sacrificed their friendships, yes, but maybe the world benefited from Dr.

Dude doing that, it's fair to say, It's fair to say and, to a certain extent, I accept that I have made certain decisions and those decisions have benefited many and it means that there are certain things that were lost, but not entirely, and now I am much more likely to seek out those friendships, strengthen them and celebrate them and value them and I have really good friends, you know, and people who really care about me and I care about them and we're there for each other no matter what you know, so I care about that a lot more than that. .

I used to and uh, put it to the test if I had to choose to live my life again. I wouldn't live it this way. Yes, I would say yes. I have some ideas. I have a certain capacity to articulate some truths. Really important and I'm not going to let that dominate the way I live my life. And I think it would have been possible for me to express that voice and put those teachings out into the world for feedback. that helps a lot of people, but I could have done it without the drive, without the sacrifice of the heart, without the connection that sometimes that entails, so you know, if I could live it, do it again, I would do it differently. and I don't think that in the end that would have detracted from my message and if it did, I would agree that yes, to make sure that you are taking action after watching this video, I have created a free breathing guide that will help you. reduce stress calm your mind and increase your energy in this guide I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work immediately even just a minute a day will start to make a big difference to receive your free guides all you have to do is do click the link in the description box below is I wish I could allow myself to be happier, yeah, what does that say?

Well, that always reminds me because I mentioned Dr. Pep and his concept of brain circuits. Yes, one of them is for play and joy. and um, you know? Winner, Poo, yeah, okay, not personally, the book, uh, and uh, that was me, my favorite books and, uh, I've talked about this before the end of that book made me cry for years because How It Ends is Christopher Robin, by the way, that's another thing, the relationship between a mil and his son Christopher was very fraudulent and difficult, and Christopher really resented the books because he felt like his father was buying these toys to write about them and not for his own benefit, wow, oh they had a very different picture of the two of them and the boy looks so alienated that he had a difficult life, but that's another story, but the book in the book Christopher Robin that the boy now has. go to school, yes, and he has to learn about history, factors, mathematics, etc., and he tells his friends, the toy animals, that he won't be able to play with them much anymore and, in the end, Christopher and Winnie the bear. little brain huh, who is the smartest of all and they leave together and the book ends with a statement something like and whatever you do or wherever you go in the Enchanted Forest, a little boy and his teddy will always be playing together and that phrase would make me cry for years because play is very important and joy is very important and that's what these people are talking about and they didn't allow themselves to experience it, they sacrifice themselves to play with joy for all these other things. you know, so the good thing is you know, I mean my marriage, the best, you know, the best thing about my marriage is the way we played together the first time I went out with my wife Ray, I knocked on my parents and I said, can Ray come out and play?

We've been doing it ever since, so um um, I think what that last regret is describing is that people sacrifice their joy, yeah, their joy for the sake of being accepted and being successful and all that. It's a huge game that's hardwired into our brains. Children play spontaneously. Babies play M and um, in that sense, we can all beat Pooh and Christopher, we can always keep playing in the Enchanted Forest and that's just essential, I think in those final

regrets

. It's the happiest word, yeah, what does happiness mean to you? It really means the ability to play and be in the present moment and and and and and you know the kids when when kids play they don't worry about the appropriateness of what they're doing.

They don't worry about war anywhere or climate change, they just play in the moment. in that they are completely present to themselves in imaginative, almost hypnotically imaginative states, so happiness just means being in the present and being allowed to be no matter what, having the ability to Today I play a lot of people like Gabo and I think you have struggled with this too from what I know, you feel so much anguish and suffering in the world, yes you feel like you have no right to be happy, what is your opinion on that? Well, first. After all, Bob Dylan said somewhere that it's hard to be completely happy when other people are suffering, it's true, so what a time of terrible suffering, you know how I feel about Gaza and the terrible things that are happening there, how Can I be completely happy? happy I can't be completely happy I can't because I can't not think about it, the horror of it um but at the same time and that's why people might start to wonder, but I'm talking about a psychedelic experience.

This was three or four years ago. I worked with psychedelics as a healer but also as a subject and I was having an experience with mushrooms and the same thing happened with OSA once and I have always felt that how could I be happy when it is possible? What happened when my grandparents died there? How can I be happy? What right do I have to be happy? If that can happen in the world and that happened in the world and both plants showed it to me. at some point that happened and yes you can be happy that one does not detract from the other that the ability to be empathetic and to recognize pain and endure pain does not obviate the ability to be happy and one does not One is not disloyal to suffering in the world by allowing yourself to be happy so that there is no necessary contradiction and I have seen people on death row who, if they win their appeal, the best they can hope for is life. in jail without a life sentence in prison without parole but they are happy and how they become happy meditation working through their traumas having remorse for what they did connecting with other people and just connecting with the present moment and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, Yes, people in that situation can be genuinely happy, which I have seen.

I have had contact with people. So who am I to say I can't be happy? Yes, then ultimately there is no contradiction. Yes, now in this society there are ways. too much emphasis on you know, don't worry, be happy. Let's ignore all the bad things that are happening, let's focus on how we can feel pleased or pleased or whatever. I'm not talking about that, no, I'm talking about being. able to hold both at the same time, yes you have to do it and this is something that I feel like I have really grown in the last few years and that I can really be very happy and content, yes, even if there is pain in the world, that's not it means I don't care, I actually care a lot, yeah, but I realized that it's a real skill, it's an evolution of the self to be able to hold those two, yeah, I really think I think it's a growth, it's True, I love the phrase that is attributed. for Gandhi, be the change you want to see in the world, yes, I live, I do my best to live my life according to that and why that is relevant to this part of the conversation.

I said it once at a live event, I said listen if you look. the news and you allow that this was a few years ago, you allow the anguish that is happening in the name of the country to affect you so much that you develop apathy, you cannot interact with your husband, with your children, you simply drink more and more alcohol even to numb your pain, yeah, what does that do? Yes, of course, you are not good for the people who are suffering, you are not good for the people around you and that then affects everyone around you, whereas you can learn to be. content that you're in, yeah, if you want to go and help in any way, you're much more capable of doing that, you know, volunteering, sending money, whatever it is, yeah, so I think this is a point really important to people, especially the way things are in the world right now, a lot of people feel like I don't have the right to be happy, yeah, well, I don't think so anymore.

I used to believe that and someone once said send me, don't do it. so loyal to your suffering and um, that's a lesson I had to learn pretty late in life, yeah, um, and as I quote in the middle of the normal, my friend Bessel Vander, the trauma psychiatrist, looked at me once, This was about 10 or 12 years ago. we were having lunch and he said gaboy, you don't have to drag arit everywhere and what he meant by that is that you don't have to let it affect your present moment, that you can be aware of it and have a memory of but don't let that determines your internal states, you know, and it's true, and I understood intellectually at the time what he meant, but it was only later that I was really able to let go emotionally, let's just talk about forgiveness then, because many the moment when people He says you know I can't forgive.what happened to me was wrong, yes, I now accept that what happened to someone could be wrong, yes, but it doesn't necessarily mean you can't forgive, yes, what's your opinion? sorry, well, last night you and I were talking about a woman who is angry and admires Edith Edgar tremendously, yes, and Edith, as I told you, was 16 years old, when I was one year old, she lived in a town where It is not southern Slovakia.

Then the north of Hungary was called Kasha or kosit and her family was taken to owitz and my grandparents would have been in the same shipment to ushitz or the next day and her parents died and she survived with her sister and turned into this. Psychotherapist, she has written a couple of wonderful books, I know you met her and interviewed her, and in one of her books she describes how she went to the burkhoff in the Bavarian Alps, where Hitler used to have his lair and he went there, she went there to forgive . Hitler and um, that doesn't mean she was right what he did, she did that to free herself, she didn't do it, she said she, I don't want to keep him in the prison of her in my heart for the rest of my life.

I worked too hard to achieve happiness and joy to let this tension and this constriction control me, so Forgiveness was not about forgiving Hitler for all the evil he perpetrated in the world, but rather she was letting go of things. emotions that surrounded her. and of the tension and tightness that surrounds it, so forgiveness is not for the other person, it is for you Now, when I work with forgiveness, I do not advise people to forgive, in fact, I do the opposite, I tell people before forgiving, allow yourself to feel all the anger that is in you, let yourself fully allow yourself.

Experience the anger that is there because once you do it will dissipate. Let it go, so don't do it to forgive. Do it to free yourself. Now let's say I was abused as a child, but let's say I find myself. totally liberated present oriented in contact with myself human being so what does that mean it means that nothing was taken from me it means that what happened caused me a lot of pain over the years but it didn't limit my ability it didn't rob me of anything, so what? what is there to forgive? So yeah and and you can also ask yourself or anyone when you haven't forgiven what's in your heart what's in your body do you like that state that you're in uh the tension do you like that's how you want to be do you think that is it really helping you?

So I don't go my way to teaching now. I know that in many spiritual practices there are practices of forgiveness and I know that in Buddhist practice and in many spiritual practices. There are meditations and prayers for forgiveness. My mind doesn't go there, but my mind does say. I always have to experience all the rage, all the hate, all the anger that is in you and be with it and see what happens to it, yes, and what happens to it. once you pay attention to it, it actually dissipates, so when Edith goes to the burov to forgive Hitler, she just says, "I don't want to hold on to these things anymore," it's not right what you did, but I don't want to hold on to this. .

Yes, these things are fascinating. I think curiosity is often a very useful path to forgiveness because if you are curious about that other person and why they acted that way mhm, I'm not talking about Hitler, here I'm talking about yes, anyone, but even Hitler, yes, what were the conditions in that person's life that led to that? If I were that person I would behave exactly the same because I would have had their parents and their childhood experiences and them bullying etc. Exactly once you look at the world through that lens your initial focus becomes compassion , forgiveness comes as a side effect of being curious, that's totally fine and there's an expression that you may be familiar with that means forgive, yeah and uh.

It starts with curiosity, yeah, so I and I think that curiosity is the essential quality that actually leads to compassion in the end. Now compassion does not mean tolerance for bad behavior. No, it does not mean validating or justifying crimes against nature. Crimes against nature. other human beings, but it eliminates that quality of tension where you make yourself superior to reality and you can and you put yourself in a position to judge reality, you know, and I am above that and I am in a position to judge that not It's comfortable, I mean, it's actually comfortable for a lot of people to be there, but it's a way to not deal with your own things, so I think curiosity is the key to ending this conversation, Gabel, we've been talking a lot. about these regrets, the regrets of dying, yes, and the last question I want to ask you is about the word regret.

I've been toying with the idea for the last 12 months or so that regret is actually a form of perfectionism, so now I'm very much into the no-regret philosophy, but not in a derogatory way. I'm going to live my life my way. It doesn't matter who gets in my way. No, with this really compassionate understanding that I have. I've always done the best I can, yeah, based on where I was in life at the time, yeah, so even the things that I look back on and the things that I remember, actually, you know? And if you were in that situation again today, would you act differently?

I do not do it. I see them as regrets. I see them as situations that happen and that have taught me something that allows me to be a better version of myself today exactly, so in my life today there is no longer any room for regret and I guess I would love to know that. you know right at the end what your perspective is on the word regret um I think chronic regret is debilitating um it's a lack of self-forgiveness it's um also a kind of selfishness of that that that that somehow so important um it's something that It has to be recognized.

I recognize that part of the way I raised my children, the way I presented myself. I've often talked about this on their show also it wasn't the best for them but it was the best I could do at the time so it's not the best. It's a question of justifying, but it's also not about dwelling on the past, repenting is dwelling on the past and what's the point, it's important to recognize that I did things that, if I had known otherwise, I wouldn't have done them in the same way. , that's just learning, regret is an emotional state that values ​​the past more than the present and accuses you of doing things you had no conscience to do otherwise, so that's where I'm at with the best, yeah, well , you know I'm a big fan of yours. work um it's just amazing to see the impact that you're having on so many people around the world.

I'm very lucky to consider you a friend these days. It's been great getting to know you over the last few years um for someone who has Heard us talk today and something connected to them something you said spoke to them and they thought wow, yeah, you know what I carry with me old stuff today. I don't express my emotions. I'm not living a life that's true. For me, yeah, what are some of your last words to them? Well, it's the word you used: curiosity, so no, why am I living this way, but why am I living this way?

You know what happened to me, what I'm carrying here, then, The key phrase is precisely the one that introduced the need to be curious, yes, in a compassionate way, so that you do not interrogate yourself as if you were the tax detective of why did it or why not, but compassionately why. It is not like this? Yes, why did you do it? And if you ask these questions with compassion and curiosity, the answers will emerge, as will your ability to make different decisions. As you move forward, where before there were no options, because you were forced to help or or driven now you can have some freedom if you are willing to be curious, so curiosity is the word, yes, chat, all your books are fantastic if someone is starting their talk.

M Journey, yeah, what book would you direct? they did well, you know, that depends on what they're dealing with, you know, I mean, if they're specifically interested in addiction, they should read my book on addiction or parenting, they should read, wait for your kids, but if they want to get it. The big picture of the package, you know, is certainly the latest myth of normality in that I combine pretty much everything that I knew at the time I wrote it and that was already published only a year and a half ago. now in 40 countries and 38 languages ​​it has been a bestseller in several countries, that's the one I would start with, but if you are interested in specific topics, then look for topics like ADHD, you should read scattered, you should, I would invite you. to read Scattered Minds, you know, it depends on what you're dealing with, but if you want a general dive into what I have to say, it's the myth of normal, that's what I would say, the myth of normal, more of 1 million copies. sold says in this one that it's been a huge success all over the world it's a great book Gabel thanks for coming back to the show thanks I hope to do it again if you enjoyed that conversation I think you're really going to enjoy this one about The Top Five Regrets of the Dying and what What we can learn from them I spent eight years caring for dying people and the most common regret during those eight years was wishing I had lived a life true to myself, not the life other people expected. from my